


shatter your crescendo, burn the music

by alynshir



Category: Kingdoms of Amalur
Genre: F/F, Gen, also it's a journey, also like it's a little gay, but make it angst >:), this is an analysis on what the fate ability might b like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:56:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22918081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alynshir/pseuds/alynshir
Summary: (written likely in late 2015, edited for here and now)a piece in five measures, in which the chorus rises and the fateless one cannot tell the difference between singing and screaming.
Relationships: Fateless One/Alyn Shir
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	shatter your crescendo, burn the music

The first time it happens, you don’t think much of it. It is after you had blinked and the world had streaked itself with fate, it is after you have stolen the threads from the would-be assassins, and you blink again as you yank your improvised daggers from the creature’s chest and the world returns to it should be. Yes, your skin is tingling, and as the Fateweaver talks, you keep rubbing the insides of your wrists on the rough parts of your gauntlets to alleviate the sensation. It feels as if there’s a single word, a single note, a single ant running on legs too small, running, running through every vein in your body, leaving footprints smoking with snowdust.

But it is only one ant, one note, one word, and only one set of footprints and it isn’t an altogether terrible feeling, as far as feelings that you remember go, so you disregard it. When the Fateweaver asks if you were injured, you shake your head, slipping your daggers into their sheaths and pushing along your way. You trip over your own feet more than once, and sometimes you forget that the air you breathe and the grass under your feet is real. At any rate, you aren’t quite sure what being alive is supposed to be like anymore, so perhaps this is normal and you have simply forgotten what it feels like to exist.

Somehow you get the feeling that it isn’t the first time you’ve lost yourself. Although you don’t quite think it was in the same manner.

* * *

The second time, your head is spinning as you try to breathe again, breathe again, in, out, in, out, because there are _voices_ whispering in your ear, calling your name, pleading for their lives, jeering, and they won’t be quiet no matter how much you ask. You’re kneeling on the floor of a crumbling theater with no performers except the ones shouting lines in your head and taking cues up and down your skin. You taste rust and only when your hand pulls away from your face do you realise that there is a rivulet trickling down over your lips and staining your teeth. You hear footsteps, of man with metal boots and of monster with metal claws - both? neither? You couldn’t say - and you cover your ears, trying to hear nothing for once, for once, and then something slashes at your skin and you are forced to roll away before the beast can make you bleed any more than you already have.

 _Quiet,_ you scream, your voice echoing in both the theater and your own head with a strange reverberation. Everything stains itself lilac and everything skids to a halt with metal on glass, before everything slows down and everything is…

Quiet. It’s quiet and crystal and it is beautiful to your aching mind. You can see again, really see as you leap for the beasts who dare hurt you, who dare touch you, you can feel your blade tearing through their sinew and skin and bone, you are everything and nothing and whatever lies between in that pure moment of amethyst.

And then it is gone, slipping through your fingers just like the final, battered corpse of the bloodhunter does as you stagger back, gasping for air that tastes of festering rot and sweat and poppies. But even as the Fateweaver approaches, jaw agape with wonder at whatever you have done, you can’t hear the voices coming back. They are quiet, and you hope they stay that way. You have things to do outside your own head.

* * *

You can’t tell them to be quiet anymore, you find, because as unruly children do, they’ve officially declared the word meaningless. You can force the world to be crystal and violet and slow, and you do it with increasing, dizzying fervor as you try to silence the army in your head, but the second you blink away the crystal, it is over and they are back within moments, minutes, hours at the very most. They are relentless, growing louder with every hit, stab, kick, and punch you land on anyone.

You can’t tell them to be quiet, so you must make yourself quiet. Scarce, gone, away, quiet.

And you’re sobbing now, hiding in a room that you wonder if you can just hide in forever until nobody remembers your name enough to scream it in your ears. You are alone, but not really, throat hoarse as you slam your fist into the wall in lieu of slamming your head against it, and you feel your bones splinter, your fingers splaying, and _they’re still screaming, dammit,_ and -

“Niamh,” you hear her say, one word amongst many more that are drowned out by the war waging with so many people, so many people are sieging under your skin, people with purpled skin, battered from your punches and slashes. So many, so many. She is concerned, voice tight and sharp and confused, angry, angry at you? No, not at you, you realise, but for you; as you feel her hands, light and careful and soothing, and when you can’t bring yourself to move from the floor, she is the one who instead kneels beside you and wraps your knuckles so the bruises don’t show anymore.

When you awaken, bones broken but bandaged and head momentarily quiet of noise, she is gone, and you wish that perhaps she would have stayed.

* * *

Things get louder again. Inevitably.

But you learn that they are quiet when all seems lost, leaving only your heart to pound in your ears, and they band together to help you stay alive. Possibly so they can shout at you some more, but you find yourself appreciating it nonetheless. One death was enough for you. And sometimes they quiet down when she shows up behind you like a shadow, a shadow with a shadow of a smile on her lips and a teasing blade against your neck.

The shadow with her name makes things quieter, sometimes, and you can only ever be thankful they do.

* * *

All songs must reach their crescendo, and the one in your head with a whole entire choir does the job, screaming and shrieking with all that they are and were and could have been had you not been there at the right moment. Or wrong moment. Or any moment in general. Your shadow is there too, questioning, wondering, and there is another one, a She roaring her glee and freedom for all to hear, for all to know her.

When you open your eyes, finally, finally, everything is quiet, and you wonder if perhaps it will stay that way. There is a scrap of paper pinned to your door, and you clutch the familiar dagger as if it is a hand that belongs to someone else, perhaps even the author.

_Until that day, I remain…yours. Alyn Shir._

A voice hums a tune brimming with mead and warmth and of the squeezing of a fluttering heart, sings it solo in your head, and you realise for the first time since you stepped foot outside of the destroyed tower, that it is your own voice, strong and self-assured in a way you don't think it ever had been before, in this life or before.

You have never heard a song so sweet.


End file.
